Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T03:03:42.088Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coulomb's Data on Harpsichord Wire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2013

Martha Goodway  and
William R. Savage
Get access

Extract

Charles-Augustin Coulomb published data on the size, strength, and stiffness of harpsichord wire available in Paris in the late 18th century which has not been cited in the literature on musical instruments despite this century's revival of baroque music and the instruments upon which it was played. During an investigation of the internal friction of several antique music wires by means of a torsion pendulum similar to the one invented by Coulomb and first described in the 1784 mémoire (Figure 1), it occurred to us to ask what Coulomb had used as the suspensions in his pendulum. His biographer, C.S. Gillmor, mentioned “harpsichord strings”, and in Coulomb's 1784 Torsion mémoire we found: J'ai pris trois fils de clavcin, tels qu'on les trouve répandus dans le commerce, roulés sur des bobines, et numerotés (“I used three harpsicord wires, such as one finds distributed in commerce, wound up on spools, and numbered”).

The spools of wire recently discovered in the stand drawer of a harpsichord in France fit Coulomb's description. The instrument was built in Paris in 1732 by Antoine Vater, and the wire found with it was wound up on small wooden spools similar to spools for thread. The spool of red brass wire had a mark punched in one end and the spool of iron wire had the gauge size (No 5) written on it in ink, while the spool of yellow brass wire had neither mark nor number. Samples of the wires from these three spools, generally agreed to be of 18th century manufacture, were collected by J. Scott Odell of the Smithsonian Institution as part of a research project which he initiated into the physical properties of antique wire. With these samples in hand it was possible to measure certain of their properties and to compare these properties with those reported in Coulomb's Torsion mémoire in 1784. Since Coulomb's wire was undoubtedly of 18th century manufacture (a degree of confidence that we do not always have with collected samples), and the data were taken not long after the wire was drawn, comparison with the Vater wire allows us to detect if, during two centuries, significant changes occur in highly drawn wire.

Type
Art and Technology
Information
MRS Bulletin , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , January 1992 , pp. 24 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Gillmor, C. Stewart, Coulomb and the Evolution of Physics and Engineering in Eighteenth Century Trance, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1971) p. 155.Google Scholar
2.Coulomb, Charles Augustin, Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences (Paris, 1784) p. 229–269; quotation from p. 237.Google Scholar
3.Dumoulin, Pierre, Revue de Musicologie 61 (1975) p. 113–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. Coulomb, Ref. 2, p. 262.Google Scholar
5. Coulomb, Ref. 2, p. 239.Google Scholar
6. Coulomb, Ref. 2, p. 249.Google Scholar
7.Goodway, Martha, “Phosphorus in Antique Iron Music Wire,” Science 236 (1987) p. 927–932.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
8.Goodway, Martha and Odell, J. Scott, The Metallurgy of 17th- and 18th-Century Music Wire, (Pendragon Press, Stuyvesant, NY, 1987).Google Scholar
9. Coulomb, Ref. 2, p. 237, 239.Google Scholar
10.Sauveur, Joseph, “Rapport des sons des cordes d'instruments de musique, aux fléches des cordes, et nouvelle détermination des sons fixe”, Mémoires de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, année 1713 (Paris, 1739) p. 325.Google Scholar
11. Coulomb, Ref. 2, p. 249.Google Scholar
12.Coulomb, Mémoires, edited by Potier, Alfred (Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1884) p. 84–85; Bell, Ref. 15 (1973) p. 172-173.Google Scholar
13.Goodway, Martha and Odell, J. Scott, Ref. 8, Table 12. The method used is given in Hughes, M.J. and Oddy, W.A., “A Reappraisal of the Specific Gravity Method for the Analysis of Gold Alloys,” Archaeometry 12 (1970) p. 1–11.Google Scholar
14. Coulomb, Ref. 2, p. 249.Google Scholar
15.Bell, J.F., “The Experimental Foundations of Solid Mechanics,” in Encyclopedia of Physics, Vol. VIa/1, edited by Truesdell, C., Mechanics of Solids, I (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1973) p. 172.Google Scholar
16. Coulomb, Ref. 2, p. 239; quoted in this article.Google Scholar
17.Gug, Rémy, Musique Ancienne (1984) p. 4–76, particularly p. 44-47.Google Scholar
18. Potier (see Ref. 12, above) offered no correction of this value in his centennial edition of the mémoire.Google Scholar
19. Gillmor, Ref. 1, p. 39.Google Scholar
20.Mersenne, Marim, Harmonie Universelle, Traite des instruments, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1636); facsimile edition of the copy at the Biblioteque des arts et metiers annotated by the author, with introduction by Francois Lesure (CNRS, Paris, 1965); translated as The Books on Instruments by Roger E. Chapman (The Hague, 1957) p. 57.Google Scholar
21. For a general opinion of Mersenne's information, see Hubbard, Frank, Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1965) p. 93. Extensive efforts have been made to rectify these data; see e.g., Karp, Ref. 24 below.Google Scholar
22.Tabor, David, The Hardness of Metals (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1951) p. 107–108.Google Scholar
23. Sauveur, Ref. 10, p. 326.Google Scholar
24.Karp, Cary, The Pitches of 18th Century Strung Keyboard Instruments, with Particular Reference to Swedish Material (SMS-Musikmuseet Technical Report No. 1, Stockholm, 1984).Google Scholar
25. Alfred Potier, Ref. 12, p. 84-85.Google Scholar
26. Martha Goodway and J. Scott Odell, Ref. 13, p. 107.Google Scholar
27.Cohen, Albert and Miller, Leta E., Music in the Paris Academy of Sciences 1666-1793 (Detroit Studies in Musical Bibliography Number 43, Information Coordinators, Detroit, 1979).Google Scholar
28.Thomson, William, Mathematical and Physical Papers, Volume III, Elasticity, Heat Electromagnetism (London, 1890) p. 18.Google Scholar